The Show

We actually entered the Wachovia Center at 7:45 missing the beginning of the opening act. We made our way through the crowd and up the steps to the VIP section, and then up the escalator to the spot where the boxes were located. We walked half way around the Wachovia Center to the box number 46 and entered the box to find a bunch of older men in their mid 40's. One of the guys thought that he was going to be the only one in the box and decided to give us a hard time about seeing our tickets and who we knew and how we got the tickets, but I was not about to let someone push me around at the Nova Savings Bank box. I had worked all summer at the bank headquarters and met everyone who worked at the bank, so when this guy who I didn't know tried to push us around, my beer muscles came on, and I gave him just as hard of a time as he gave me and showed him that I was not going to let him run the box. After this brief altercation between me and my knew friend, my friends and I started to get a beer before the Pearl Jam came on.

Finally, PJ came on stage and opened up with great lights and phenomenal energy. The crowd was extremely into the show and it seemed as though the band was as well. Eddie Veddor talked a lot during the show and always said that he loved the crowd in Philadelphia and told us that they originally weren't going to do a show in Philly, but they felt bad when the Atlantic City show sold out so quickly. He spoke very poetically and chose his words very carefully as if every single word meant so much to what he was trying to say. The crowd embraced everything he said with cat calls and cheering.

They played 3 full sets with nearly 11 songs in each set, but the concert seemed as though it was only 20 minutes long, it flew by. After the 3rd encore, they finally got off stage for good. It was a picture perfect night and when I was leaving the incendiary sounds of each note played by the band stayed with me; it was as if they were replaying the show inside of my head. In the parking lot I realized that in the mass confusion before the show I had forgotten to purchase a t-shirt to remember this special day so we sought out a t-shirt guy for almost 10 minutes before we found one. I will always remember that night as a bonding experience with my friends and with the band; I think that after you see PJ live, you gain a new respect for them and for the music that they play. It was incredible.

Clip of "Alive" from the Concert I attended in October

nothing could go wrong...

So I drove to the show and everything was picture perfect. We got there around 4:30 and set up shop. I got the grill out and set it up and got that baby fired up, next we pulled out the cooler and the old pig skin. We had parked right next to some of our friends from UD and so we had a large number of people so we could easily find our spot when we wandered around to look for other people and to check out the tailgating scene; you never know when you will see someone who has perfected the tailgate so well that you can observe and enhance your own tailgating skills, unfortunately this was neither the time nor the place to gain tailgating knowledge.

After the charcoal started to get white and we threw the football around for a while, listening to our favorite pearl jam songs on the radio, we decided that we needed to start cooking. Thankfully one of the kids that I brought with me was one of those guys who is always running the grill. Its always nice to have a guy like that who you are friends with, cause manning the grill really can be a pain at barbeques when you have people who want to eat at different times during the day. So Rich was in charge of cooking and when the first batch of dogs and burgers were cooked to perfection, i grabbed the buns out of the car...No actually i left the bag with the buns, ketchup and mustard sitting on my kitchen counter. How could i have possibly forgotten these essential items. Although it was a minor detail that would not ruin the day, the food would have been much better if we had buns. Not two minutes later, my friend dropped my sunglasses off of his head and shattered the lens; i was beginning to think that this day was going to be filled with flaws, so i reached in my pocket and made sure that i still had the tickets. Thank God i still had them so i just tried to put these bad things out of my head and just remembered that i was going to be in rocker heaven in less than an hour.

Finally the big day came

So finally the big day came and I was so excited to see my favorite band. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep the night before, but I was on a bus all night Saturday and half of Sunday coming back from University of Illinois where we had a hockey game.

So I got up and went to my 9:05 class, trying to be a good student, and then went to my 12:20 class. After that class I was done for the day cause I couldn’t possibly go to my 2:30 class and not get to the show until 6 when it started at 7. I had to turn in a paper in that class so I emailed my teacher my paper and turned a copy in to her office. The class I was skipping is called Marketing, Society and Environment, so in my excuse I pointed out the reasons why it would be environmentally, socially, and economically irresponsible for me to stay and go to my class instead of leaving earlier with my friends who were also skipping their classes. My teacher responded to my email and said that my excuse received an A+.

I went straight from class to get the tailgating essentials: charcoal, burgers, hot dogs, hot dog and hamburger buns, cheese, condiments and of course beer and ice with which to fill a perfect ‘concert cooler’

I then double checked that I had the tickets, loaded the car and went to pick up my friends, I had covered all angles of the day and there was no way that anything could go wrong on this perfect day, or so I thought…

'Waiting is the hardest part'- Tom Petty

When it finally kicked in that me and my buddies were going to see Pearl Jam in October it was a great feeling. I could barely wait for the entire fall to pass so I could see them already. Working at Nova Savings Bank gave me a lot of time to think about the show, because I was finishing my tasks earlier than they planned. I thought through the concert a million times; i thought of every song that i wanted to hear, I thought of the order that i wanted to hear them in, and I thought of the lighting situation that would go with each song. My final dream set list was:

Daughter
Rearview mirror
Corduroy
Last Exit
Save You
Jeremy
Alive
Once
Not for You
Yellow Ledbetter
Go
Animal


I knew that they would play a bunch of songs, but these were the ones that i had highlited and wanted to hear in and around other songs.

I had seen enough music videos and DVD’s about the band that I knew how they would come out to some of the songs, and what the crowd would be doing when they came out and our reactions to certain songs, but there was still hope that they would do everything differently and that it would be the best concert that I had ever seen.

This concert was going to be the best musical concert that I had ever seen, but I have seen some pretty amazing all around entertaining concerts such as Phish, so I didn’t know how the concert would measure up, but I had a good feeling that it would be the best.

am i really going to see pearl jam continued

So I finally worked up the courage to speak to the CEO about the tickets. I found a time when he was just speaking casually to an employee who's desk was next to mine and I waited for their conversation to die down a bit. When I saw the opportunity I said, "excuse me, Mr. Hartline, I saw that the company has tickets to the Pearl Jam concert and I was wondering if I might be able to use them if no one else in the company is planning on it." Much to my surprise he was not reluctant at all and he said that he would love it if I used the tickets because I would probably have more fun than anyone else in the company would. He took me into his office and gave me a lecture about the company suite and letting me know that while I was at the show I would be representing the company. I knew that I would be able to represent the company in a responsible manner because I didn't want to get too crazy so that the entire show was a big blur.

As soon as I got the reply email from the person in the company who was responsible for managing the tickets I called my three friends that I was going to take to the show and gave them the amazing news. I called three of my best friends; two were my housemates and the other a gigantic PJ fan. They were all just as excited as I was, and at first one of my friends thought I was pulling his leg.

For yet another excerpt from this amazing story check back in a few days, until then god speed.

Am i really going to get to see Pearl Jam

This summer I interned for a bank in the greater Philadelphia area called Nova Savings Bank. It was a great opportunity to learn a little bit about the business world and definitely a resume builder, but the greatest perk about working there this summer was the opportunity I had to try to get my hands on some Pearl Jam tickets.
For those of you who don’t know, a Pearl Jam concert sells out as fast if not faster than any other concert in the world; it is almost impossible to get tickets unless you are a part of the Ten Club, which is their fan club. My top three concerts that I wanted to go see before I died were, in no particular order, Pearl Jam, U2, and Radiohead. These three bands are nearly impossible to see, but I will make any effort necessary to fulfill this list since live music is one of my greatest passions.
Someone in the company sent out an email saying that the tickets were open if anyone in the company wanted to go see them. When I read this email I was in shock and desperately wanted to see them, but felt weird about asking the CEO of the company if I could use the tickets. I had only been working there for 1 month and although I worked two desks away from the CEO’s office, he was quite intimidating and I had only spoken to him twice or maybe three times and our conversations were no more than a conversation that you would have with someone sitting next to you at the bus stop. For the rest of the story check back in a couple of days.

The grunge movement that came out of Seattle in the early 90s was brought about by number of reasons; the frustration by true musicians of 80s glam, the inevitability of changes in everything especially rock, as well as a number of other things. However, perhaps it was the atmosphere of hope in 1990s America, after a decade of conservative government and the assembly of young rockers in the gloomy, rainy, cloudy city of Seattle. This is why people bought the grunge records of Pearl Jam and Nirvana. But the artists themselves were still very much gloomy people; set in the backdrop of a rainy city, relentlessly playing the dainty club scene to which they had become so affectionately close. It is with this reflection that music was to be made. The mainstream accepted the hopelessness emotion and distraught disconnectedness that demigods (or were they demagogues?) like Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder had so eloquently supplied them with. Both singers dealt with fame differently, but in the end, their music lives on and will always be important.